Illegitimi non carborundum

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Month: April 2014

On Good Friday, 2011 I decided it was time to quit with Pastoral ministry.

We had come to the end of the “Way of the Cross” service in Glens Falls. Many of the downtown churches participated, starting at the Catholics, ending at the Episcopalians, with the Baptists, Methodists, Salvation Army and Lutherans all along the way.

Volunteers carried a large wooden cross from church to church.

Where the service ended, in the Episcopalian sanctuary, clergy sat up in the chancel, laity in the nave.

That last reflection was about leaving your burdens at the cross. People were given the opportunity to come forward, to write whatever was burdening them, whatever was sapping away their life, on a scrap of paper they had received as they had entered, and to leave their burden at the cross.

As the reflection ended, and as the people came up leaving their scraps of paper, I realized that pastoral ministry had become a burden that was sapping my life. I also realized that I didn’t have a scrap of paper. None of the clergy had paper scraps. Denial, I suppose, that clergy might carry life-sapping burdens.

I went down and got in line anyway. I took off the robe I’d been wearing, and when it came my turn, I left the robe there.

Then I sat down in the nave with the rest of the common folk.

If anyone else realized what I’d done there, nobody said anything.

The next day the Episcopal Rector called to ask me if I wanted my robe. “You left it at Good Friday,” he said. “I thought you’d want to know in case you needed it tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I won’t be needing it any more. If you know of a mission where someone needs one, send it there.”

“Oh,” he said. Then after a long pause, “Ok.”

“Thanks,” I said again. “You helped me finally do something I’ve needed to do for a while now.”

“Oh,” he said again. “Ok. You’re welcome.”

That was it.

A few weeks later I announced my resignation, and finished things out until the end of June.

That year Easter really was a resurrection experience for me.

I remain convinced that Easter really happens whenever I, or anyone, can manage to lay down a life-sapping burden and then begin to live, whether for the first time or the first time in a long time, without picking it back up again.

A little more than a week ago I wrote about the Heartbleed vulnerability.

The security hole was announced on April 7. Most online services you’re likely to be using patched things up pretty quickly. Other smaller sites, not so much.

Here’s the thing. In all the hype about the issue, nearly everyone was talking about changing passwords. You might have changed your passwords back then. I didn’t recommend that when I wrote about it on April 10. But a lot of news people did. It was bad information.

If you changed your passwords back when it was first announced, you actually did it too soon.

Your may have fixed your password on all your major sites after they’d patched. But more than likely you “fixed” your password before the patch was forwarded around to all the other places and devices that access the major sites.

How’s that?

You’ve probably got sites accessing one another. You know, when you’ve allowed other sites to “Log in Using Facebook.”

If all those little sites (and you can’t even remember how many or which ones) weren’t patched yet, they’ve exposed your shiny new password. Sorry. It’s just as toast as your old one.

Now that the dust has settled, and all those little sites have had time to catch up — NOW it’s time to change your password. Now. Even though you changed them the night you heard about it on the news. Even if you already did it, do it again. Just do it.

And don’t use “123456” or your dog’s name.

Get a password manager so you can use 20-character long strings of randomness for your passwords and not worry about forgetting them.

Here’s a little puzzle I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of days. I’m sure this has been done before, but it’s the first time I’ve run into it, and it’s been a fun little exercise.

The ACME Company needs to keep track of some inventory. The inventory is kept in several different locations. For each product they need to be able to tell how many units are in which location.

The puzzle is to design a database that handles that information. Ideally, the database can sync the inventory in one or more locations with the database of their online store.

At it turns out the database is pretty simple. You can do it in three tables:

TABLE 1:

Products

SKU
ProductName

TABLE 2:

Locations

Loc_ID
LocationName

TABLE 3:

Quantities

Quant_ID
SKU
Loc_ID
Quantity

The magic happens in Table 3. In Table 3 SKU is keyed to the SKU from Table 1. Loc_ID is keyed to Loc_ID from Table 2. Then you set a multi-column unique index so that any given SKU-Loc_ID combination can appear only once in the table, representing the Quantity of any given product code at any given location.

Now you can search on Table 3 by either location or product. Table 3 automatically expands to accommodate new values whenever a new product is added to Table 1 or a new location is added to Table 2.

Since then I’ve been trying to figure out how to pay the bill. It also got me thinking about how to avoid having to go into debt for the crime of making a modest living next year.

The only way I can think is to die.

So I’m announcing today that when I put my taxes in the mailbox, I’m also going to file my death certificate.

Friends and family members may leave their condolences in the comments below this post. In lieu of flowers, please send cash.

I know you’re not supposed to send cash in the mail, but I’ll need to close all my bank accounts and remain “off the financial grid” so long as I’m dead, so I won’t be able to cash your checks.

Also, if you’re paying me for anything, like websites or computer repairs, you’ll have to send cash from now on.

Don’t worry about reporting anything to the IRS on next year’s 1099s. Since I’m dead, you can just say “I had this cash, but I lost it.” It wouldn’t be lying. It would be gone, and since you won’t know what I did with it, it would be lost.

Meanwhile, I’ll be writing here daily as Caspar the Ghostwriter, and making occasional appearances as Caspar the Ghost. (I’ll let you decide whether you think I’m “friendly.”)

I read several blogs about marketing because I learn a lot about how it’s supposed to work. Several of them have plenty to say that applies to fields other than marketing, too. They’re interesting and entertaining.

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Sunday Epidemic was a kind of "practice blog" where for a year I posted something every day.
Many thanks to the several readers and commenters throughout the year.
For updates after December 12, 2014, please check in at iCaspar.net.
Thanks,
Caspar Green